Avoid mistakes in the second house: Home construction company or architect?

Thank God we still have a little time to think - because I think, unfortunately, the decision will not be that easy. Our children are still so young that they have not yet come up with the idea of needing their own rooms.

For comparison, large houses >200sqm in this region cost about 700k on the existing market. That also includes a large plot of land. In our case, I see another new build as not feasible because it is significantly more expensive.

I have already said everything about that. A four-year-old house is practically a "daily registration" on the market.

If, for example, the windows in the existing building would have to be replaced anyway, then I would also have less scruples about replacing them with a large panoramic window front. I would not do that in our 4-year-old house.

You neither could do that in the actual house, nor should you urgently question your priorities. You are now sitting like Ilsebill Fischer in a house that in causal connection with the fact that you poorly managed your planner, is so exemplary thoroughly programmed for an unsatisfactory result. Thank you on behalf of all those warned in time for your deterrent example.

Thank God we still have a little time to think – because I think the decision will unfortunately not be easy. Our children are still so young that they have not yet come up with the idea of each needing their own room.

Good that you yourself come to that conclusion: four children will not develop like four only children.

@ Wilder Süden: If, for example, the windows in the existing building needed to be renewed anyway, I would also have less scruples about replacing them with a large panoramic window front. I certainly would not do that in our 4-year-old house.

But remember, it is significantly cheaper to do that in a new building and to design the statics accordingly from the start than to install a 5m window in an old building.

It feels like existing properties more often have large living spaces with many rooms. Probably because building today is considerably more expensive than before. That might still be a solution for us with the many rooms.

That is deceptive. Most old buildings are not larger than today’s. Of course, there is the lawyer/doctor/... who built 230 sqm in the 70s, but whether the living space in such buildings is used efficiently, I would strongly doubt. And such houses are definitely not cheap to renovate.

The old buildings I know that approximately reach this number of rooms (8 bedrooms/guest/workrooms) are usually rather two-family houses or were used as multi-generational houses (with more or less well-separated living units). That means where grandma lived in the house for a long time or something similar. From the rural area where I grew up, I partly know it like that (there are also some older farmhouses, for example, where the barn or similar was later converted into living space). But I wouldn’t call it "the norm" either, and many houses there are maybe even a bit older than the thread starter imagines. And I wouldn’t describe it as a classic single-family house anymore.

Someone wrote on my post 4 years ago that our [Allraum] was too small – after all, it is 60 sqm. Or rather, that there is too little space in this [Allraum]. At the same time, I have often read again that our floor plan wastes too much space and that everything could fit into much fewer sqm. Our [Allraum] is a rectangle – so not an L or something around the corner. Would that perhaps have been the better choice? Can you get more out of the sqm that way or what is meant by dividing it differently? I also notice that it is tight in our [Allraum]. Our large dining table is standing right in the middle: It is 1.20 x 3.00 meters. And we use it with guests, so I am glad that we decided on such a large dining table. There are often visiting children or grandparents/other adult guests. In other words: It does get fully used. Does that mean we should make the [Allraum] even bigger now or how can it be better planned?

60m2 I find riiiesig. We are currently planning for our big(!) house with about 40m2 excluding the kitchen, so dining and living room. Plenty for evenings with >10 people